Retro Rabbit lovesMicrosoft BotFramework

We continue with the second post in our 5-part mini series on Chatbots. This time we speak about BotFramework, created by Microsoft.

What is Microsoft BotFramework?

BotFramework is a .Net framework for building conversational chatbots. This framework allows a software engineer to build and connect intelligent bots in a system that interacts with users naturally wherever they are. The technology is currently used in a myriad of popular applications we use today – like Cortana, Skype, Teams, Office 365 mail, Slack, Facebook Messenger Skype for Business and more…

Microsoft BotFramework’s notable features.

On the tech side, BotFramework has a host of features that make bot-making pretty easy. Open source Bot Builder SDKs allow one to build simple to sophisticated dialogs. Cognitive Services enable a bot to see, hear, interpret and interact in more human ways.

Another notable feature is the use of LUIS, a language-parsing service that returns JSON entities which help the bot understand natural language usage better than it would when compared to simple keyword matching conventions.

From a User Experience perspective, the connected interfaces seem easy enough to use and fairly straight-forward.

Screenshot: Microsoft invites developers to add their bot creations to the directory, for use and peer review by others.

What we love about Bot Framework.

It just works!

This software is simple to implement and quick to get up and running. Using LUIS, the intents can be easily managed and the system is super extendable. New bot responses to user input can be added easily and a bot can quickly be integrated with most business systems and channels thanks to the Open source SDKs and API integration capability.

Where have we used this software?

Insurance firms and Fintech companies have used Retro Rabbit’s chatbots to rapid-prototype the development of customer-facing access to their knowledge-base. We’ve also used this technology on corporate web based solutions to serve clients with more personal communication about out clients’ products & services.

For more on BotFramework, check out their website. Also catch some of our talented Software engineers talking about our experiences with Bots at Botcon 2017, happening on the 25th of May in Cape Town, South Africa. Part 3 in this 5-part mini-series is all about why we love Botpress.